No Disney World for Bucks broadcasters
TV, radio crews to call games at Fiserv Forum
With the NBA's decision to move to Walt Disney World for its season restart, there will be no basketball at Fiserv Forum for the foreseeable future. That means no in-person fans, no chants, no gasps of excitement, no gatherings in the Deer District, no bratzooka, no jams played by D.J.
Shawna and, of course, no antics from Bango.
Not any time soon, at least. But there won't be nothing – very far from it. When it comes to broadcasting Bucks games, the show must go on. While all the basketball action is happening at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex in Kissimmee, Florida, all the voices you're used to hearing will still be coming at you live from Fiserv Forum.
For the Bucks' eight seeding games – beginning at 5:30 p.m. Friday against the Boston Celtics – and the first round of the playoffs, Jim
Paschke, Marques Johnson, Steve Novak and Zora Stephenson will broadcast live on Fox Sports Wisconsin from their temporary studio inside the Bucks locker room. Ted Davis will be in the building, too, calling games on the Bucks radio network from his usual perch inside the arena.
They all will be watching the game on monitors and providing real-time commentary – or as close to real-time as possible – through the magic of technology. Welcome to
the new world of watching the NBA.
“I have never done this before and I had never intended to do it, but here we are,” said Paschke, who is in his 34th year of calling Bucks games. “I used to joke that my job was telling people what they could already see and now I realize that my job has been to tell people what they couldn't see and bring that into the telecast. Now I'm reduced to a field of vision that's almost exactly the same as the viewer at home. It's a little interesting.”
As fate would have it, the Bucks and the NBA actually positioned themselves well for broadcasting games during a pandemic. Last summer, the league struck a deal with Verizon to use its cyber infrastructure to create a network connecting all 29 NBA arenas and upgrade their bandwidth about tenfold over years past.
Now that every team is relegated to doing remote broadcasts, this superior network – now set up and connected to the three arenas on the Disney campus – will allow them to have a robust broadcast that can mirror the quality people are used to seeing along with at least 10 potential camera angles. There are enough feeds, including one camera dedicated to and controlled by each team, so that the local broadcasts can cater the experience to their own audiences.
While viewers might see most of those new angles predominantly on replays, the broadcasters will have access to an all-10 screen showing them every camera angle.
“Any time you have more views it definitely helps the talent be able to tell a story, obviously without them being there,” Fox Sports Wisconsin executive producer Tony Tortorici said. “We've kind of gone through it already on baseball with the Brewers and the guys like it. I mean, it's not what we're all used to, but as long as you have enough views that you can kind of see things and what's going on it gives them a better chance to augment the experience.”
Paschke and Stephenson have some experience with the new setup as they collaborated to call the Bucks' three scrimmages, which aired on the Bucks' digital platforms and drew a total of 47,338 streams.
They called those games live from Fiserv Forum with Paschke on play-byplay and Stephenson moving from a sideline reporter role to the analyst chair – something the first-year Bucks broadcaster has done for college games in the past.
Behind the scenes, crews worked both in Milwaukee and on-site on the Disney campus to direct the on-screen action while tinkering to add virtual fans, crowd noise, images on LED screens and on-court logos.
“I had so much fun and I really enjoyed it,” said Stephenson, who misses her close access to the team but also mentioned that her viewing angle is actually better and less obscured now than it normally is.
“I'm so grateful to the Bucks for the opportunity. So much credit to Jim, who has just been an awesome mentor and a friend. We were just hanging out watching a basketball game and people just happened to be listening to what we were talking about. That's what it feels like when I was calling the games with him.”
The duo operated in a seamless fashion as they adjusted to the league's new normal, keeping the conversation flowing throughout the game. When Stephenson took the play-by-play reins, the former college basketball player at Elon didn't come off as someone calling her first NBA games.
While Stephenson will go back to her sideline role when games return to Fox Sports Wisconsin – a title she joked may need renaming considering the circumstances – Paschke made sure to tell her how much he appreciated the depth of knowledge and tone Stephenson brought to the broadcast. He also recognizes the importance of visibility, thinking about how awesome it must be particularly for young girls to see someone performing well in a role traditionally dominated by male voices.
“I told her yesterday that she had a lilt about her presentation when she was doing games that I appreciate,” Paschke said. “I think she's done a wonderful job. I think she got an opportunity here to show people another level of her basketball expertise and another level of her television comfortability.”
When it comes to radio, the setup is much less complex since there's no need to orchestrate camera angles and replays. Davis will be in his regular spot in Fiserv Forum and plugged in to call the games on WTMJ (AM-620) and the Bucks radio network. He, like the TV broadcasters, will be given as many camera angles as possible to translate into audio storytelling.
As the games get going in earnest and the season resumes, everyone will have a lot to get used to. The goal for the Bucks' TV and radio broadcasts, though, is to provide entertainment that is reminiscent of what used to be the norm – even if they're doing it from an empty arena.
“It's different times,” Stephenson said. “This is a global pandemic we're talking about and health and safety is the priority. With everything being different, we're still going to give you an amazing broadcast.”